By Avi Creditor

0

May 24, 2013 3:00:00 AM

Looking way down the line, the England defender could see himself playing for the just-announced MLS expansion franchise, which Manchester City co-owns.

ST. LOUIS -- The Manchester City-New York City FC link is sure to produce a number of players who head to the Big Apple from England, and Manchester City and England international defender Micah Richards could very well be a name to stash away for the future as one of those potential MLS imports.

Days after Man City announced its co-ownership, with the New York Yankees, of the next MLS expansion franchise, which is set to begin play in 2015, Richards said he would be interested in taking part in the Manchester-New York pipeline one day.

"To announce a team that's over here called New York City is just unbelievable and hopefully four, five, six years ... I can come and get a run out over here as well, because I love New York," said Richards, who scored the winning goal in Man City's come-from-behind, 4-3 victory over Chelsea in a friendly at Busch Stadium.

Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano said upon the announcement of the new franchise that he would look to use the connection between the two teams to send players to New York, but that it would be a byproduct and not the sole purpose of the initiative and would be done as long as it was in the interest of the MLS side.

"The purpose here is to build a team in New York that will be able to compete for winning in New York and in the U.S. and for that team it will be with players from all over the world," Soriano told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday. "It will be only natural that some of the players we have in England might play here at some point in time, but this is not the objective, and it will always be the case if these players are going to help us win in New York."

After promoting New York City FC for the last few days before a stopover in Missouri for the first leg of its U.S. tour, Man City will return to New York for a rematch with Chelsea, which is slated for Saturday at Yankee Stadium.